Michael Renard, executive vice president of bioprinting company Organovo, explains how 3D printing could one day be used to produce replacement tissue, vessels and organs in this interview conducted for our print-on-demand magazine Print Shift (+ transcript).

In the interview Renard describes how Organovo is applying 3D printing to cell biology and tissue engineering.

"We’re working with small pieces of tissue at the moment - a small piece of blood vessel or liver," he says. "Once you have the cells ready, we can print something in a few hours."

He also discusses how the technology can be used for experimental drug testing: "Being able to provide functional living human tissues will provide drug-discovery scientists with entirely new means to test drug candidates."

Although supplemental tissues such as patches to assist heart conditions may reach the clinic soon, he thinks that use of "more advanced replacement tissues will most likely be in 20 years or more."

The interview forms part of a feature on the way 3D printing is transforming the healthcare industry in Print Shift, our one-off, print-on-demand magazine about this emerging technology.

The magazine was created by the Dezeen editorial team and produced with print-on-demand publisher Blurb. For more information about Print Shift and to see additional content, visit www.dezeen.com/printshift.

Top image: cross-section of bioprinted human liver tissue.

Here's an edited transcript of the interview, conducted by Claire Barrett:

Claire Barrett: Tell me how Organovo’s 3D printing research began?

Michael Renard: The concept for printing tissues came out of Professor Gabor Forgac’s research at the University of Missouri, enabled through a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation. That work was about using living cells and depositing cells in an architecture that could create tissue.

It led to the creation of Organovo as a company, which acquired that intellectual property exclusively. Gabor worked mostly with non-human cell sources to build structures, layer by layer. Through that science we arrived where we are today.

Claire Barrett: Is it possible to print an organ?

Michael Renard: Bioprinting should be thought of as the first step in building fully functional tissue. The printing starts a process to create a continuous piece of tissue. That early tissue construct is moved to a bioreactor where it grows and differentiates into its final form. We’re the only company doing it. Our approach is consistent with other forms 3D printing because it’s an additive process, but what is unique to Organovo is our application of the process in the field of cell biology and tissue engineering.

Claire Barrett: How does it work?

Michael Renard: Tissues are built layer by layer, using a combination of hydrogel and cell aggregates deposited in specific spatial arrangements that are programmed into the bioprinter. A wide variety of shapes and orientations can be created using the combination of these materials.

When you deposit cells they have to be the right cells and in the right biological state; the hydrogel holds them in the right place. Then the cells fuse, form junctions, and the hydrogel can be removed to yield a tangible piece of material made up entirely of human cells.

Claire Barrett: How long does it take?

Michael Renard: It all depends what you’re trying to grow. We’re working with small pieces of tissue at the moment - a small piece of blood vessel or liver, for example, so our time from printing to maturity of the tissue can be quite quick. Once you have the cells ready, we can print something in a few hours. It will then take a few days for it to fuse and become anatomically correct, and begin to exhibit expected metabolic properties.

It is unknown how long it will take to build larger, organ-sized tissues. We are researching ways to grow a vascular system as part of the tissue design; that is needed to feed tissue grown on a large scale, without which cell death will occur as tissues expand in size.

Claire Barrett: Are certain tissues easier to grow?

Michael Renard: Virtually all tissues have a specific design and repeating patterns. Each tissue has a consistent set of characteristics, such as certain cell types that create capillary systems, nerves and collagens. These patterns and symmetry can help as the scientific advances and discoveries with one tissue will better inform how to approach the creation of subsequent tissues.

Claire Barrett: How is it used in drug discovery and what are the benefits?

Michael Renard: Being able to provide functional living human tissues will provide drug-discovery scientists with entirely new means to test drug candidates and study their effects in an environment most like that of the drug administered in the human body. This can both improve the safety of potential drugs and help determine whether a drug should be taken forward in very expensive human clinical trials. The end result can be a significant improvement in the efficiency of safety and efficacy testing.

Further to that, diseased tissue models can be built, giving the scientist a completely new approach for understanding disease and disease progression, with the opportunity to find new targets for building drugs with new mechanisms of action.

Claire Barrett: Is the public worried about the ethics of growing organs in a lab?

Michael Renard: People with chronic or degenerative conditions often live with the constant need for medical and assisted-living care. We can keep people alive, but at a cost to the healthcare system and at a reduced quality of life for the patient. What if we could reverse that process, or replace an organ? That’s what the focus is. There is public interest. People are waiting for transplants, but transplant surgeons lack the tissues to help all those in need. Eighteen people die every day in the US waiting for a transplant.

Claire Barrett: What about tissue rejection? Could you take cells from a person in future and grow tissue for transplant and therefore avoid this issue?

Michael Renard: It has become possible to harvest cells from a person’s own body and use them as a source of therapy. Research over the last decade or so shows that many sources of stem cells can be isolated and these often can be a valuable source of potential therapy from the patient themselves. In concept, a tissue engineered from a person’s own DNA should yield a match, with a much-reduced chance of rejection.

Claire Barrett: How far away are you from creating tissue that can be used in operations?

Michael Renard: In the next 10 years it is possible that supplemental tissues, ones that aid in regeneration, will progress through design, clinical and regulatory testing, making it to the clinic as therapies. Examples may include nerve grafts, patches to assist a heart condition, blood vessel segments, or cartilage for a degenerating joint. But more advanced replacement tissues will most likely be in 20 years or more.

Claire Barrett: What needs to happen to enable the next stage of innovation to take place?

Michael Renard: Supplemental tissues need to be shown to be safe, clinically effective and cost-effective in terms of reducing the total cost of care. Also, the ability to grow larger tissues - solving the challenge of creating a vascular and capillary network as an inherent part of the engineering solution - is the critical next step to advance the science.

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are ten years away" appeared first on Dezeen.

News: next month's International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York will be the first major design fair to place 3D printing and digital fabrication at the core of its programme, with a four-day series of workshops introducing the hardware and software that could change the face of design, manufacturing and distribution (+ interview).

DesignX, which takes place from 18 to 21 May alongside ICFF, will comprise 15 one and two-hour workshops on topics including 3D printing, online product customisation, parametric design and even 4D printing – the nascent technology of programming materials capable of self-assembly.

"At [...] these trade shows, you typically have a very large audience who attend over multiple days," explains Ronnie Parsons, a 3D printing expert from New York studio Mode Collective, who will lead the event's 3D printing workshops with design partner Gil Akos. "There are talks that address design and technology, but there really isn't anything that allows people to have direct access to industry leaders through an educational programming model.

"So we thought, why don’t we have a specially built classroom, a lounge space with a little gallery, and put that in the middle of the showroom floor and do educational programming throughout the course of the entire trade show? So that people who attend ICFF could take classes in the very tools and technology that are used to make the things that are surrounding them at the event."

Partnering with The Architect's Newspaper, Parsons and Akos have put together a programme of workshops led by experts from across the digital design and manufacturing industry, including MIT architecture and programming lecturer Skylar Tibbits, Duann Scott of 3D printing marketplace Shapeways, programmers Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg from Massachusetts design studio Nervous System, and Francis Bitonti, whose 3D-printed dress for burlesque dancer Dita Von Teese we previously featured on Dezeen.

Other DesignX workshops will include programmer Andy Payne's introduction to using Arduino microcontrollers to control design environments, a look at the networked future of computer-aided design, and a session about online marketplaces for distributed manufacturing.

"3D printing is the thing that is most visible right now, that's the thing that is most at the surface," says Parsons. "But I think that the skill that is really important for designers in the future is not really 3D printing, but actually the processes of thinking through the design to production phase – beginning to think about how things are made and how the new tools and technology out there will change the way you think about design."

Attendees can sign up for any number of workshops individually, but must already be registered to attend ICFF.

This month Dezeen launched Print Shift, a one-off print-on-demand magazine dedicated exploring the fast-changing world of 3D printing and the way the new technology is changing the worlds of architecture and design – see all our coverage of 3D printing.

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lead ICFF 2013 programme appeared first on Dezeen.

Fashion designer and 3D printing pioneer Iris van Herpen tells us how printing and scanning technologies could transform the fashion industry in an exclusive interview for our print-on-demand publication Print Shift (+ transcript).

Advances in material and printing technology mean that flexible, washable clothes are now possible, says Dutch designer Van Herpen, whose latest ready-to-wear collection includes printed garments.

"I’m really happy that 3D prints finally act with the movement of the body," she said. "[My] last show was really a big step forward because it was totally flexible and the jacket we created, for example, you could put in the washing machine."

Van Herpen is one of the first fashion designers to investigate the potential of 3D printing to create clothes and accessories. Her 2010 Crystallisation collection featured dramatic printed items resembling body armour while her more recent Voltage collection features more delicate and wearable items.

"I always collaborate with architects or someone that specialises in 3D modelling because I don't specialise in it myself," she says. "I know a little bit, but not as much as the people I work with."

She also ponders how 3D scanners could revolutionise the way we order our clothes in the future. "Everybody could have their own body scanned and just order clothes that fit perfectly." See all our stories about Iris van Herpen.

Print Shift, a one-off, print-on-demand magazine, was created by the Dezeen editorial team and produced with print-on-demand publisher Blurb. For more information about Print Shift and to see additional content, visit www.dezeen.com/printshift.

Here's an edited version of the interview with van Herpen, conducted by Claire Barrett:

Claire Barrett: What was it about 3D printing that first interested you?

Iris van Herpen: With 3D printing, it was the first time I could translate the 3D image I had in my mind immediately to the 3D model in the computer and then the 3D printer.

With hand work or with the usual fashion designing I have something in my head that’s three dimensional, which first has to be translated into something two dimensional, like a drawing, then it goes to three dimensionality again, so it feels really, really old-school. It’s a strange way of working - you have a step in between.

The things I have 3D printed I could never do by hand. It would just be impossible. The beauty of handwork is that it's always a bit different and you can never have something totally symmetrical. At the same time, I think that's the beauty of 3D printing - it is one hundred percent symmetrical in the smallest details, even the printing layers. That's the fingerprints of the technique.

Claire Barrett: Was the use of digital technology something that you were exposed to in college?

Iris van Herpen: No, it's actually really funny. When I was young I was raised without television and we didn’t have a computer. I think we were the last people to have the internet and when I was at the academy I didn’t have a computer myself. I actually had computer lessons but I didn’t like the computer at all. I had discussions with my computer teacher and he said "you can't work without a computer," and then I was really stubborn and I thought "I can, watch me". I did everything by hand all the time.

With 3D printing I suddenly saw how many possibilities it would give me in terms of three dimensionality, which convinced me to start working with technology.

Claire Barrett: Did your collaborations start from wanting to work in a more digital way?

Iris van Herpen: With 3D printing I always collaborate with architects or someone that specialises in 3D modelling because I don't specialise in it myself. I know a little bit, but not as much as the people I work with. If you start from the beginning with something that someone else is already experienced in, I think that's a waste of time.

Even if it wasn't necessary, I would still do it because I don’t want to start to walk in circles, like being in my own mind all the time. For this collection, for example, we worked with Neri Oxman, Julia Koerner and Philip Beesley. It's really bringing two worlds together because I think fashion is super interesting, but the architects who are bringing other things are just as important to me.

Claire Barrett: Why do you largely seem to be alone in pushing the use of 3D printing technology within fashion?

Iris van Herpen: I'm really open to sharing ideas and working with somebody, but I feel in fashion it’s quite a locked industry. Fashion designers are used to collaborating but usually with musicians they dress or an artist that makes a print for them. Working with scientists, architects or people that have different knowledge is just not a part of fashion and that’s something that surprises me.

Claire Barrett: Do you foresee a time when you might work with a material scientist to try and create something different?

Iris van Herpen: I always get inspired by materials, but I feel that I'm choosing them, not designing them. Of course it takes a long time so you can't design materials for every season, but if you're at least able to create something new every one or two years then I think you have more control over your design process.

Claire Barrett: Do you agree that your pieces are becoming less like sculpture or armour and more like garments?

Iris van Herpen: Yeah, I’m really happy that 3D prints finally act with the movement of the body. Now a girl can even dance in it. This last show was really a big step forward because it was totally flexible and the jacket we created, for example, you could put in the washing machine. You could sit on it. It's really a garment now.

With [the Voltage collection] I really tried to make that step away from sculpture and find a field in between traditional weaving fabrics and 3D printing. With 3D printing you can decide how much flexibility you want in millimetres or centimetres on a specific part, for example the knees or the shoulders, and you can just include that on the file.

Also, something that's really interesting is that they can include colours in the 3D prints. The colouring is in the file, it's not something that they add later on. That's a big step. If we continue with that you can create 2D prints within the 3D prints and then it feels like you're creating something 4D.

Claire Barrett: How long do you think it will be before 3D-printed clothing becomes mainstream?

Iris van Herpen: I would love to be the first to include 3D printing in ready-to-wear. The flexibility is there, I think now the focus is on developing the materials, the long-term quality and size, because there are no printers that can print a whole dress yet.

But fashion is a super big industry. You have all the factories with the traditional sewing machines, so I can imagine maybe the industry will not be ready for such a big change because you need technical people with knowledge of 3D printing, 3D printers and software, instead of people that know how to sew a seam. I can imagine the technology is there but the industry is not ready for it or the change is too big.

Claire Barrett: Can you foresee a time when people will be able to download and print out an Iris van Herpen dress at home?

Iris van Herpen: Yeah, I can really imagine everybody has their own 3D skin and you can just order something online, but I don’t know if people will print it out at home. I can imagine you could have printing factories, order your dress and maybe the customer gets a little bit of a say in it as well. They could say "well, I want this one but with longer sleeves".

Everybody could have their own body scanned and just order clothes that fit perfectly. I think it's super old-fashioned that it's only the 100 richest women in the world who have clothes that actually fit them and I think 3D printing can really fill up a gap there.

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and order clothes that fit perfectly" appeared first on Dezeen.

Interview: struggling smartphone maker BlackBerry hopes to wrestle back lost market share with a new touchscreen keyboard that will eradicate the "embarrassing" mistakes common on rival smartphones. "Sometimes it's kind of scary when you get your own emails back and you read them," said BlackBerry's head of design Todd Wood.

"Text input is something that we knew a lot about and we thought, let's apply all the intelligence, all the technology we have to make writing and composing and communicating much more efficient and more professional," Wood told Dezeen.

Canadian company Blackberry, which changed its name from Research in Motion at the beginning of the year, is launching two models that use the new BlackBerry 10 operating system – the fully touchscreen Z10 (top and below), available since January, and the forthcoming Q10 (bottom), which has a full QWERTY keyboard as well as a touchscreen.

According to Wood, the new operating system is a response to the growing number of users who had taken to carrying two phones with them – a BlackBerry for business and an iPhone or other touchscreen for personal use. "We solved it with a feature called Balance, where you can easily switch between the environments of business and personal and you can have different apps and different content on both," says Wood.

But for those unwilling to make the switch to a touchscreen device, BlackBerry will still be developing QWERTY phones like the Q10. "As a design we almost own the category," he adds.

Read the full interview below.

Emilie Chalcraft: BlackBerry is launching two phones this year that use its new operating system – the touchscreen Z10 and the touch with keyboard Q10. What do they offer that older models don't?

Todd Wood: These are the first products running on our new operating system, BlackBerry 10. This is something we've created from the ground up. It's built on an operating system that we acquired two years ago called QNX, and it's really suitable for multi-tasking.

We believe it's the future of not only mobile communications, but something we're calling mobile computing. Because you can do virtually any of the multi-tasking apps or services on the go, while you're mobile, and that's quite unique.

All of your communication and social feeds shows up in the hub. You can glance, or "peek" at the hub to see if you have a new message or alert, or you can flow over to other applications like the alarm clock or calendar or maps.

Emilie Chalcraft: BlackBerry is best known for its integration of the full QWERTY keyboard into the phone, so why would you want to move towards a pure touchscreen model like the Z10?

Todd Wood: We have 79 million customers that love their BlackBerrys, and they're primarily keyboard BlackBerrys. These are for people that can type without thinking and love the tactility of the keyboard, and that's great. But we as designers started to notice this phenomenon of people carrying two devices, an all-touch and a BlackBerry – it's often the case of having one business device and one personal device.

So that was one problem we wanted to solve, and we solved it with a feature called Balance, where you can easily switch between the environments of business and personal and you can have different apps and different content on both. Then your business is happy and you're happy, because you have everything you want in one device.

The other problem that we saw that we really wanted to do something about was to do with large displays. They're fantastic for browsing, fantastic for viewing movies, maps and pictures, but the problem with a large display on these touchscreen devices is it's very difficult, and sometimes embarrassing, to type on them.

Emilie Chalcraft: What do you mean by embarrassing?

Todd Wood: We noticed that there are websites that post the most hilarious misspelled messages, and sometimes it's kind of scary when you get your own emails back and you read them. So we realised that's a problem that people have with the accuracy and the efficiency of typing.

Text input is something that we knew a lot about and we thought, let's apply all the intelligence, all the technology we have to make writing and composing and communicating much more efficient and more professional.

The [new] keyboard offers a mode where you can actually have the system suggest words and you can flick these words onto the page, so you don't have to type out frequently used words or names, or long words.

Emilie Chalcraft: But is a full keyboard still more accurate than a touchscreen?

Todd Wood: For some it is, if they're really hard-wired or they have this muscle memory for the keyboard. I've actually been using the Z10 for a number of months and I've become really good at it so I'm willing to switch, but I think that a lot of our customers aren't quite willing to switch, so that's why we've offered the choice.

Emilie Chalcraft: So although it may seem like you’re trying to phase out the keyboard, you're actually retaining that design element because people like it so much?

Todd Wood: Absolutely, it's very iconic. As a design we almost own the category – anything with a QWERTY keyboard, you call it a BlackBerry. But also, what we were excited about was that the engineering can really make something different and better in the world of touch and all-touch devices.

Emilie Chalcraft: The BlackBerry is obviously is a very popular phone for business customers, so are you trying to move away from that customer base with this new touchscreen phone?

Todd Wood: It's really about reframing the problem and realising you can be in an enterprise of one, if you're a freelance journalist or whatever, and you're balancing work and personal.

So we're designing for that person – someone who's hyperconnected, someone who's getting stuff done, and we know that often it's the case of multi-tasking to get things done. And just like we liberated email from the desktop so you're not chained to your desk anymore, in a way we're taking multi-tasking away from the desktop and putting it in your hand.

Emilie Chalcraft: Four or five years ago, BlackBerry was at the top of the market, but since then you've been rapidly overtaken by Apple and then Samsung. How do you propose to compete with those companies?

Todd Wood: Smartphones have become a very big business for our customers and the carriers, and with that big opportunity comes competition. I think the very positive side of all of that is that we're all striving to make things better, so it's really driving innovation in the category.

Through this evolution in the category there are clearly two typologies of devices. There's the one that's most familiar, with the QWERTY keyboard, and that's a category that we own. Then there's the all-touch, which is almost like a Ford or a sedan – just the new normal.

I think then we start to look at the differences between the sedans. There is the brand – and I think you'll see clearly with our product design that it's a BlackBerry – and then it comes down to what makes the user experience better than the other brands, whether it's the applications, like BlackBerry Messenger, whether it's the quality of the display, or just the graphic of the device where we have the distinct edge-to-edge glass.

Emilie Chalcraft: You recently named pop star Alicia Keys as the brand's creative director, but a few weeks ago she was spotted tweeting from her iPhone. Why would a company choose a celebrity as its creative director, especially if they don't have any design training?

Todd Wood: The interesting part in the collaboration with Alicia Keys has to do with our Keep Moving campaign. She is really an iconic personality. She's somebody who is getting things done, working with and using Blackberry as a creative tool and as a communication tool through various applications. She'll be very instrumental further downstream through marketing activities and relationships with the core BlackBerry people in the music industry.

She doesn't have any industrial design background, so it's not clear exactly how we'll work together, but I think that's something to be inspired by and surprised by.

We're a very open brand to collaborations. We've worked with Porsche Design to do a very premium, or "ultra-premium" BlackBerry in the past. They have their own store network where we could experiment with materials that for mass production would be difficult to do – the real leather back, the fully machined seamless frame, etc. So those collaborations are always important.

It's a different way of working. We don't do everything ourselves. We are very open to the developer community, so that could mean being open to brand collaborations, whether it's Alicia Keys or Porsche Design.

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misspelled messages" appeared first on Dezeen.

Interview: architect Ben van Berkel of UNStudio was in London last week to launch Canaletto, a residential tower being built in the east of the city. He spoke to Dezeen about the project, about his plans to create the first open-source architecture studio and about the "devastatingly difficult" situation for architects in the Netherlands.

Inspired by research into how technology start-ups use the internet to share information, van Berkel will this summer relaunch UNStudio as a web-based knowledge platform. "It's going to be a knowledge-based organisational website or series of blogs where we communicate about the way we can improve our knowledge," he said, adding that architects have been slow to change the way they operate. "We all live in the iPhone 5 phase and architecture is still in the Walkman phase."

Above: UNStudio's Canaletto residential tower designed for London
Top: Ben van Berkel portrait by Inga Powilleit

Van Berkel also spoke about the situation in the Netherlands, where architects are suffering "psychological stagnation" due to political changes that have all but stopped the country's once-exemplary house-building and public architecture programme.

"There are not many cultural buildings coming from the ground, housing has been stopped, the economy more or less stagnated and most of the developers in cities are afraid to develop," he said. "Over the last four years many offices have had a hard time and even went close to bankruptcy."

UNStudio survived, van Berkel says, because of its busy workload in the far east. See all our stories about UNStudio.

Above: sketch for the Canaletto tower by Ben van Berkel

Here is the transcript of the conversation between Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs and Ben van Berkel:

Marcus Fairs: Tell us about Canaletto, the project you've just launched.

Ben van Berkel: It's a new residential tower here on the edge of Islington and Hackney. It's unusual to build a residential tower in London. Most of the time when you see architects involved in new towers in London it's related to office buildings. So it's a residential tower with particularly the aim of playing with the context and a new idea of how you can make wonderful different textures and scales. The idea of the traditional skyscraper interpreted in a new way.

Marcus Fairs: Your client told me the brief was to design a beautiful residential tower because they felt like there hadn't been a beautiful one in London for a long time. What do you feel about that and have you attempted to create a beautiful building?

Ben van Berkel: I've always been quite sensitive to the word “beautiful”. I hope that the building has a lot of sensualities and unusual aspects that you don’t normally see in residential towers. Maybe it's related to my fascination with furniture design and the idea of how one can extend an interior to the façade.

Maybe the beauty is related to a kind of refinement, an intentionality that we gave to the design. So the elegance is to be found in the texturing of the façade, giving it a more unusual scaling.

Above: sketch for the Canaletto tower by Ben van Berkel

Marcus Fairs: And it has an articulation on the façade, which looks maybe like lips or ridges sticking out. Tell us about those.

Ben van Berkel: I like your reference to lips! If you could kiss this tower it would be nice. There is someone who recently wrote about this actually; do you know this book by Sylvia Lavin called Kissing Architecture?

It's not that we refer so much to lips but more to the idea of framing. How could you frame, say, three groups of interiors in clusters so that you could maybe talk about neighbourhoods in the sky. If you look at the history of residential towers, they're [usually] so neutral and monolithic. If you walk away from the tower you cannot point to your own apartment.

So the idea is that you can say “well I'm living in the third cluster”. You know, that you can point at your own apartment. That identity is something that we were working on quite intensely.

Marcus Fairs: UNStudio works around the world: Shanghai, Singapore, places like that. But this is your first project in London. How does London compare?

Ben van Berkel: London is a wonderful, intense city to work in. I always get this question from my colleagues and friends here: “Did you not have difficulties with the regulations and the planning department?” But it was quite good actually [for us]. I don't know, maybe as a Dutchman I like restrictions and I like to play with the puzzle of restrictions. The more difficult, the more I am pressed to innovate. So I like that.

Also maybe because I was here for so many years at the Architectural Association and enjoyed so much being in London in the 80s, I always had this ambition to be in London and hoped to get the opportunity to do some work here, so I'm really excited.

Above: sketch for the Canaletto tower by Ben van Berkel

Marcus Fairs: You were talking earlier about how it’s a really tough time for architects in the Netherlands. You said that your office now has to rely on overseas work. What has changed there?

Ben van Berkel: It's quite devastatingly difficult right now for a lot of architects in Holland and it's related to a change of policies. The government changed the levels of cultural support. There are not many cultural buildings coming from the ground, housing has been stopped, the economy more or less stagnated and most of the developers in cities are afraid to develop.

If you look at the numbers, our economy is still number five or so in Europe; we are okay. But there is a kind of psychological stagnation going on whereby over the last four years many offices have had a hard time and even came close to bankruptcy. Colleagues who were lucky enough to have some international work, Mecanoo or OMA etc, could survive for that reason.

By luck we had opened an office Shanghai three years ago for a project we did there. We expanded it to a fully organised studio and now we survive also thanks to that. So it's that we wanted to expand; we are there also because we want to learn from Asia. Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and China are the places at the moment where we have an enormous amount of good work.

Above: UNStudio's Galleria Centercity department store in Cheonan, South Korea

Marcus Fairs: For a long time British architects looked to the Netherlands because of the policy of commissioning good architecture and supporting architects. Are you saying that that's over and that not just because of the economic crisis but because of a change of political attitude?

Ben van Berkel: Yes, but that doesn't mean that the intellectual policy making of housing and planning is totally lost. Of course we should still be happy with the rich history of architecture, urban planning and design we have in Holland. Now maybe I see a chink of light. We had this strange combination of highly right-wing governments who had to govern alongside left-wing parts of the government, sopolicy making didn't fit at all over the last few years. But now, luckily enough, that is over. There is a new form of rethinking about what the state can do to its planning in Holland and so it is a new interesting time now.

England and also other countries like Singapore look a lot to Holland still, in terms of how we have always engineered the country [since so much of it is below sea level], how we have dealt with infrastructure and housing in general. Singapore is a place where so much expansion needs to be further developed over the coming years. My role there is significant in that I can communicate these intensities of knowledge between these locations.

Above: UNStudio's V on Shenton skyscraper designed for Singapore

Marcus Fairs: So you're saying that things are looking more optimistic for the future in the Netherlands but for the time being everything has stopped?

Ben van Berkel: Stagnated, yes.

Marcus Fairs: You were talking about wanting to open up your architectural practice, to become more open-source and to maybe learn from architecture blogs and the online world. Can you tell me more about that?

Ben van Berkel: Before the summer we're going online and - you're maybe the first one I tell this story to - with the idea of knowledge communities within the offices. We have more or less moved from a network practice - the United Network practice of UNStudio - to a more knowledge-based organisation.

So whenever an architect joins the office you are not only purely an architect anymore, you are an architect who is developing an expertise with us. So you become part of the platform on new material research, or new ideas around sustainability or affordable strategies etc. We want to set up this onlineknowledge platform so that we [can] share this within an open-source system; not only internally within the office but also with the outside world.

What we are going to do is go more public with these knowledge platforms and communicate what we can achieve with our knowledge, and the knowledge others might have, about how we can build more intelligent buildings, for instance.

Above: the UNStudio Knowledge Platforms are formed around the topics of sustainability, materials, organisation and parameters.

Marcus Fairs: First of all, how will that work? And second, how will that benefit you?

Ben van Berkel: Well it will benefit me not in such a way that I will have other designers helping me to design my buildings, because that would never work. But what I am actually learning lately is that, with the knowledge we have developed around sustainable ideas, I can make more affordable buildings.

With these techniques you could become more efficient in the way you process not only design, but also the production of your buildings. It allows us to share with and engage the outside world in how you can improve that; how can you refine that. So it might be that even a student who did research on a particular part of concrete core activation for instance might in turn provide us with knowledge that adds to our own research.

It's not going to be a social website, it's going to be a knowledge-based organisational website where knowledge can be shared, contributed and collected and where we can communicate about the ways we can improve our knowledge.

Above: diagram illustrating how UNStudio’s Knowledge Platforms reach out to external partners for collaboration

Marcus Fairs: And do you have a model for that? Are you modeling it on an existing organisation?

Ben van Berkel: At Harvard I've done intensive research for the last two years on how the younger internet companies are now organised. I've learnt so much from how the digital generation develop new forms of collaboration, co-creation, outside-the-box thinking - also with the way even how companies are organised. Their business models look so much less linear than all the companies we have seen over the last century. I believe that I can learn from these companies.

Architects most of the time - and I was part of that too for a long time - have not learnt that if you can be more efficient in the way you distribute your strategies, how you organise your organisation, then you could create far more freedom for design.

So I’m doing this in order to create a far more cultural space for the projects we can do in the future. So it's not about the efficiency of the way we work or to be quicker, but it's actually to expand on the polarisation of the profession. On the one hand we can learn how to become smarter in the way that we organise ourselves and on the other hand make much more space for the quality of the cultural, spatial, organisational effects of the way we make architecture.

Above: diagram illustrating the potential applications and developments of UNStudio’s knowledge

Marcus Fairs: So basically you think that architectural businesses can learn from tech start-ups?

Ben van Berkel: Yes.

Marcus Fairs: And this has come out of research you're doing at Harvard. What is your role at Harvard?

Ben van Berkel: I'm very proud to have this position as the [Kenzo Tange Visiting Professor chair at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design]. It's for three years. With my studio there I can research how these new companies can have an effect on the way we do things differently in the future. How we might make workspaces for instance, or living spaces. Or I look at social sciences and human resources and new forms of business models and how these new companies have been operating over the last five, six years.

And they're highly innovative. Some companies have an open-source strategy for collaborating within 20 countries but have a company of only five or six people. But they do all their communication over the internet.

Marcus Fairs: And you think that architecture companies have not really evolved that quickly and may be behind?

Ben van Berkel: Yes. I sometimes believe that we all live in the iPhone 5 phase while architecture is still in the Walkman phase.

Marcus Fairs: What will the first manifestation of this be?

Ben van Berkel: Just before the summer, around May, we will go public with the online communication of our knowledge communities and also the full story around how we will be reorganising the studio.

Marcus Fairs: And you'll be the first architect to do this?

Ben van Berkel: Yes. I think we will be the first, yes.

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- Ben van Berkel appeared first on Dezeen.